


A Mound of Bones Between Us

by Lisbetadair



Category: Call of Duty (Video Games), Hellblazer
Genre: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Crossover, Dark Magic, Family Secrets, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mexico, Modern Warfare 2: Ghost Comic, No Slash, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-06-19 00:53:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15498666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisbetadair/pseuds/Lisbetadair
Summary: Everyone makes mistakes, but no one fucks up like John Constantine.He thought he was doing his best for the young Simon, leaving him in ignorance, forcing him to accept the same run-of-the-mill, mundane existence everyone else got, but you can't outrun destiny, particularly when you're alone, captured in enemy territory on a black ops mission gone horribly wrong. Now Lieutenant Simon Riley is watching his blood pool on the floor, and he's praying for death, but not expecting her to answer.You can't deny what's in the blood, the genes... the family.





	1. Prodigal

**  
**

_ A crossover between Hellblazer and the world of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, using the story of the accompanying Ghost comic. _

 

Chapter 1: Prodigal

 

“I want a word with you.”

 

I knew who he was without even looking round, knew from the moment he put his hand on my shoulder, before he even opened his mouth. I know my own. It might be a magic thing, in the blood, or it might just be the bleeding obvious in front of my own eyes, but I _know_.

 

I still nearly choked on my pint with the shock. Just because I recognised him didn't mean that I expected him. I'm not fucking psychic.

 

I braced myself, and turned round to look at him. I could see her there, in the soft, slack eyelids, sharp jaw, and in the auburn halo of shaggy hair, but behind that, the same receding widow's peak, the strong nose I've always felt was my best feature, and the pale, cool blue eyes that stared back at me from the mirror every morning.

 

 _Shit_.

 

“Alright, Simon?” I said, because it pays to look like you know what you're doing, even when you're bricking it.

 

I looked back round at my mates, who had gone silent the moment he laid his hand on me. Jamie, frozen with his pint halfway to his mouth, and Chrissy, her fingernails digging into the table, tensing for fight-or-flight. Definitely the smart one of the bunch. Chas looked at me, then up at Simon, then back at me. I could see the wheels turning behind his slack-jawed face as his brain struggled to process the blindingly obvious reality.

 

“You remember Maria, Chas? Used to hang about with the old Mucous Membrane, back in the day. This is Maria’s boy.” I said, attempting to clarify matters.

 

Simon looked round the table, his expression impassive, and then back at me. He blinked once, slowly, and his mouth remained the same flat, unreadable line. I felt it then, the distant scent of candle wax, sweet fried dough and rancid fruit. My memories of our last encounter were hazier than the once had been, but I was sure it hadn’t been there before, sure that I would have noticed at the time. I knew I had felt it somewhere else, but for the life of me, I couldn’t place it. When I opened my eyes again, in the flash as my vision adjusted to the light, I saw it: the darkness that passed just for a moment across his face, and the sudden white afterglow of the bones beneath. I shook my head, not sure if it was my imagination or not.

 

“I want a word with you.” He repeated, his voice a dull monotone, a world away from the angry kid who’d blocked my way, his fists clenched, ready to attack an adult twice his size with pent up, livid fury. I wondered what had happened to him, but I had a sneaking feeling that whether I liked it or not, I might be about to find out.

 

I shrugged at the staring circle around the table. “Duty calls.” I said, before I drained the dregs of my pint. I got up, swinging my coat off the chair and over my shoulder as I moved to  follow him outside. I wasn’t expecting trouble, he just didn’t have that vibe, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t bringing trouble or trouble was looking for him. Frankly, he looked like he was stoned out of his mind.

 

I gave Chas a nod that suggested I might catch up with him later, and he frowned, so I waved my hand with a dismissive expression. I didn’t want him losing sleep over me, or worse trying to lend a hand. I was in enough bad books as it was, and I hadn't even bought a round yet. I was going to have spadework to do next week.

 

Outside, he paused only to allow me to catch up and draw level before he silently moved off.

 

“How’s your Mum?” I asked, hurrying to catch up.

 

He shrugged. “As shit as can be expected.” he said, declining to elaborate further. I didn’t push it, but it didn't sound exactly _great_. I just trotted along behind, and kept my thoughts to myself.

 

Simon had grown tall despite the best combined efforts of shit genes and chronic poverty, but he stooped, his shoulders slumped, as if he was past caring. His posture hid that actually, if you looked properly, he was built like a brick shithouse. If I'd been better dressed, he could have passed for my bodyguard.

 

Already the autumn evening was drawing in around us, the streets shrouded in the pale sodium glow of lamplight and the alleys off the main road inky pools of black concealing God-knows-what, but Simon didn’t seem worried. He walked along at a steady pace, and I followed. He didn’t seem in a hurry to talk, and I wasn’t in a hurry to get started either, but just when this had gone on long enough to be awkward, he turned sharply left into a dark alcove.

 

 _Shit_. I knew this place.

 

The door was invisible from the street, not because of magic _per se_ , but because it had been smothered with so many torn and yellowing posters and overlaid with scrawls of graffiti for so long that it looked just like another piece of wall. An ordinary punter would have walked right on by, but I could feel the wards thrumming as we approached, a deep electrical hum that sent a clear message to anyone thinking of opening it: _fuck off._

 

Simon stopped directly in front of it, and muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t make out, whilst placing his palm in the centre of the door, on a crackled, faded poster with a symbol of a sugar skull. The spray paint pattern shifted as the ward unlocked with a gust of the same aura that hit me when I first saw him, but stronger: the rancid fruit winning out over the sweet fried dough and the candles. I knew then who had her claws into Simon, and the thought did not please me at all.

 

I had been here before, years ago, at the bequest of some new-breed Pruszków mob hardmen, who saw soft pickings in the block of buildings owned by London's minute Mexican minority. We were on the north side of the block, and quick glance either side confirmed _Tepito_ to the left, _Lavadero_ to the right.

 

The three men who came to see me were worried, because, and I admired their enthusiasm to adopt British mannerisms so readily,  of “ _weird bollocks”_  since they attempted to firebomb my premier local purveyor of authentic _barrio_ cuisine for failing to stump up on protection money. The ludicrous idea of Corazon Sanchez, the most feared and revered of Tepito brujas coughing up for protection brought a smile to my face. She was the last person who needed protected around here.

 

A full-on duel between me and her would have taken out three floor of prime south London real-estate, and I had no specific loyalty to my new customers, so we called it quits over a particularly fine bottle of tequila and I warned the Polish boys just to leave the place the fuck alone. Needless to say, they didn’t listen, and I think given the circumstances, their families should just be glad there was enough remains for a decent burial.

 

Simon slid a mundane key into the physical lock and when it twisted, the door swung open at his touch. He held the door open, and jerked his head for me to follow him inside. As I crossed the threshold I felt the wards crackle over my skin and then, as I passed the threshold, it ebbed away. Behind me, the door slammed shut, and we were in the dark narrow stairwell leading to the flats above, the air around us heavy with the smell of tobacco and old cooking.

 

He was already ahead of me, up along the passage towards the base of the stairwell proper and he stopped on the threshold, silhouetted in the flickering light.I caught up, and discovered it came from  several hundred fairy lights woven through the balusters on the stairway, backlighting a drop of tulle that sectioned off the curve of the stairs into an alcove decked out in a kitsch combination of high Catholic iconography and dazzling floristry.

 

I might have mistaken it for a fashion shoot, because in the centre, at the focal point of devotion, a thin girl in a voluminous taffeta bridal gown slouched languidly on a folding chair. Except she went beyond the fashionable thinness of haute-couture, she was frankly skeletal. The arms draped over the arms of the chair were barely fatter than the bones beneath, and I could count the ribs under the taut, shiny skin exposed by the low cut of her dress.

 

The air around her was thick with power, and I couldn’t be sure if the sweet, rancid smell of decay was real, or whether it was the impression of the magic coiling around her, drifting out into the space in slow, wafting drifts, sizzling against my shielding with a faint bluish haze.

 

Slowly, she turned to look at us, staring past Simon to focus on my with an inhuman gaze of multi-faceted, glittering coldness where her eyes should have been, deep in the dark hollowed sockets of her skull.

 

“Hello, John Constatine.” she said, with a wide, unnatural, smile,“I think it’s time we had a little chat.”

 

 


	2. The Initiate

 

Simon cried.

Not because of the abundant agony, or the humiliation of being dragged, naked and bound through the dust whilst voices taunted and laughed above. He could no longer distinguish his injuries, they blurred and blended into a totality of pain.  He cried out of sheer frustration, knowing that he should be able to think, once had the ability to reason and plan and remember. The drugs kept his faculties just out of reach, stripped his capacity to make sense of anything. He no longer knew past from present, reality from dream. The drugs. The nightmare cocktail of mental poison shunting him into another tumbling slew of images and sensations The sharp sting of the needle no matter how hard he fought. He was bound in chemical chains into submission, to the whims and wants of his captors. 

He cried. 

He was seven years old, in a club, the screaming, cacophonous riot of sound hurting his ears. Bodies pressed against him, the stench of sweat and vomit filling his throat. He was lost.  _ No _ . That was the past. He tried to concentrate, but thinking felt like grasping for a fish in a river, slipping just past his fingertips. 

He was hiding, in his room with Tommy, watching the shadows of his mother and father as they fought in the hall. His mother screaming that she was done with him, the useless fucking bastard and she had got rid of all the fucking snakes anyway, and then he'd gone for her. 

No. That had already happened too.

The burning cold air in his lungs as he walked above the water, laced with a nauseating petrochemical stench. Salt and frost crunched beneath his boots on the metal grating. Icebergs on the horizon beyond the shapes of men with faces he did not know and then the vision lurched away.

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” A voice in the darkness that he recognised, but could not place. He felt his blood surge, the deep electrical hum starting in his ears and then fading as the voice trailed to a whisper.

He tried to focus, and found himself staring at the sky, the stars clearer than they had ever been above him, the stench of tobacco smoke, sweat and blood. He was moving, lying on the back of a flatbed truck as it juddered and shook beneath him, ploughing over a rough, potholed road. Laughter. A flash of orange arched across his vision and there was a sudden, sharp pain as the butt of a lit cirgarette landed between his legs and then rolled away as the truck lurched. A voice laughed, but he was beyond shame.  _ Was this now? _ He wasn’t sure.

He wanted to die. 

_ Magic _ . Did he want to see a magic trick? 

No. He wanted it to stop. He wanted it to be over. He wanted to to die.

A face loomed over him, and after a while it resolved into Manual Robas, grinning between his words spitting flecks of saliva and ash onto his skin as he spoke words Simon couldn’t understand. The face shifted the skin and fat falling back, the bones rising to the surface. Pain exploded in his head. 

_ Magic _ .  _ I’ll tell you the secret of magic. _

Uncle John walking in the dim light of the descending stairwell, turned to him and opened his hand to reveal fire there in his palm,  _ real _ fire that burned him when he reached out with a small finger and poked the flames.  _ Magic _ . The buzzing, thrumming noise in his head again, his blood rushing suddenly in his veins.  _ Yes _ .

The flames engulfed him and John disappeared. The sky was suddenly so blue, so clear and endless beyond a haze of heat. The stench of petrol. The thundering, pounding roar rotors overhead and man, a man he did not know lying beside him, clearly injured, clearly in great pain, sweat and tears on his face as he strained to reach his hand out towards Simon’s own. The thrumming noise in his head so loud it blocked out all other sound. The rush of blood so powerful that his vision blurred.

_ Yes _ .

Then dark, and silence. 


	3. The Girl Who Was Death

“Who the fuck are you then?” I asked.

"Back in the old days they worshipped me as Mictecacihuatl, queen of the underworld. They shed their blood for me in rivers, dedicated their sacrifices and their offerings. I was glorious.” She spoken in a heavy, Hispanic accent that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to pin down.

“Oh yeah?” I said, with a shrug. I picked up one of the votive candles arrayed at her feet and lit up a cigarette from a flame. The familiar warmth of the smoke in my lungs a comfort. I hated dealing with gods.

“And then, it was over.” she gave a deep, wistful sigh that sounded filled with longing. “None of us had really been paying much attention, because there was more always power, more sacrifice, until suddenly there was no more to give. I was no more than a memory for centuries, until the conquistadors brought faith to the New World, and I became Santa Muerte, patron saint of the outcast, the desperate and the dispossessed.” She waved her hand, in a gesture that took in the objects of devotion, Simon and myself.

I gritted my teeth. I _really_ hated dealing with gods.

As she spoke, Simon sat down by the edge of the flowers, his stoney face softening and relaxing. I thought he was shooting up, which would have at least explained his frankly unnerving placidity, but then I saw the dark contents of the syringe in the candlelight and realised that he was drawing his own blood. He flicked open the tourniquet with a practiced hand and it clattered to the floor. In a deft moment for a man clearly off his face, he tipped the contents of the syringe into a shot glass laid out at the foot of the shrine, and then paused to press the point where the needle had punctured the skin, wiping the oozing blood with a crumpled tissue. When he was satisfied that it had stopped, he pulled open the carrier bag he’d been carrying to reveal the components of a Pret a Manger meal deal, which he arranged artfully on a plate.

“What a _nice_ boy.” Santa Muerte said smiling, when he had finished. She leant forward, shifting her weight so that she half rose from the chair and reached out with long, bony fingers to caress his face.

I tensed. I felt uncomfortable with religious infatuation at the best of times, but something about Simon's glazed expression, knowing that he didn't seem to be in full control of his faculties, under the influence of ancient, forgotten magic, made my skin crawl.

She held his chin between her thumb and forefinger, tilting his head up and then moving it from left to right, examining his face in the low light. He made no effort to resist her, his pupils wide and unfocussed. She turned her gaze back to me and stared at me for a full ten, unnerving seconds, scrutinising my features before she sat back. Simon settled back onto his backside and slouched, staring, vacantly into space.

She picked up the shotglass of his blood and knocked it back in a single swallow. The blazing eyes dipped for  a moment, and she sighed, a sound seeped in nostalgic ecstasy. I watched her lick her red-stained lips clean before she picked up a half empty bottle of tequila nestled in the folds of her skirt and took a long swig. She offered it out to me.

“No obligation” she said, and I took it. She pulled out  another chair, still folded, and passed it to me. I opened it, fighting the creaking springs, and sat opposite, next to Simon and his offerings. There was no point getting off to a bad start, and free booze was free booze, particularly the good stuff. It was smooth, an almost caramel sweetness instead of the expected burning in my throat.

“How does he fit in to all this?” I asked, handing the bottle back.

“He prayed to me.” she explained, taking another swig.

“Really?” I raised my eyebrows. I had left Simon on the eighth floor of a tower block just outside of Manchester, some twenty years before. I had my doubts that Mictecacihuatl, or her modern, Instagram-friendly avatar was the first deity he chose to petition.

“He stood on my soil and begged for death.” She smiled. “I listened. Every day, I listened when they cut him, when they starved him, when they beat him and pumped his veins full of _toloache_ and LSD.”

She snapped her fingers and the stairwell unwound to darkness. I felt warm, humid air press on my skin, and the stench of human suffering, of blood and sick and shit, assaulted my nose with such violence that I choked back an automatic gag. A part-naked battered body landed on the floor in front of us, blood and mucus leaking from his nose, the rest of the face too swollen and bruised to make out any recognisable features. Had it not been for the blazing power streaming from it, amplified by extreme pain, I wouldn’t have made the connection, but like I said, I know my own.

“I opened the way when he asked, when he wanted to die, as I have always done since I was Mictecacihuatl. Frankly, I have had better rituals but given the quality of people calling themselves _brujos_ these days, it’s nice to see someone making a real effort.” she mused, as masked, bulky figures pulled the body away, back into the pool of light.

Speaking as someone who's trodden brimstone encrusted pathways around the torture pits and seen the devil's work close at hand, what they did to Simon was hard to watch. _A real effort_. I thought.

“You're a sick bitch, you know that?” I said as a spray of blood streaked across the room, splattering softly on my shirt.

“It had been a thousand years.” She said, her breathing heavy through her teeth. Her voice was sultry, and dark, the sense of _hunger_ in her words palpable in the air. “A thousand years since one of the blood had been initiated in suffering, petitioned to enter Mictlán and walked the shores to my throne.” Her eyes dimmed, and the scene dissolved, the screams faded, and we were back in the stairwell, in the light and flower scented air. The rancid odour that Sante Muerte seemed to exude seemed almost pleasant now.

She seemed to sober up, her glittering eyes seeming suddenly more focussed, but still dancing with remembered ecstasy.

I reached down, concentrating to keep my hand from shaking, and picked up Simon’s limp arm. A chunk of memory smashed into my consciousness of holding the same hand, but smaller and feeling the same crackle of buried, untapped power there. I felt for a pulse, and found one.

“He came to Mexico to learn magic?” I asked, concentrating to keep my voice steady. I let his hand go and it dropped onto his leg with a dull slap. He hadn’t even noticed.

“He came to Mexico on loan to the CIA, as part of their counter-terrorism operations in the region, hoping to assassinate a minor, but tenacious climber in the narco hierarchy who had his fingers in some _empanadas_ they didn’t approve of. Unfortunately, as you saw, that did not go to plan.”

I considered this and wondered what had happened to Simon in the years that had passed, to end up as a spook, doing someone else’s dirty work. It was a funny old world, I supposed.

She laughed. “The shit little narco was an _idiot,_  one of those sweaty men hanging about in the war museums desperately trying to keep their hands off their cocks whenever they see the word ‘SAS’.” Her words with laced with bitter venom. “He thought they were touched by some some of _divinity_ , some kind of super-human specimen.” She made a noise of disgust. “He had a _brujo of the blood_ in his basement” She gesticulated, emphasising each word. “A true heir to the priests of Teotihuacan, but no… all he wanted was to do was wank over special forces.” She spat the last phrase, clearly disgusted at this lack of appropriate recognition.

“Simon was born in Manchester.” I said.

“So?” she said. “There are those with the blood and those without. If you had been born in the _barrio_ , you would be a _brujo_ , probably. If you’d survived.” She stabbed the air in my direction. “It is the same. He was born to magic, whether you like it, or you don’t”. She bent down and picked up the sandwich Simon had left her, peeling open the package deftly with her long, bony fingers.

“So, what you're telling me is, he went off dicking about for Queen and country, and you made him a wizard by mistake.”

She glared sideways at me, an impressive feat for a woman with no actual eyeballs.

“In hindsight, the nature of preparation for initiation into the priesthood of Mictecacihuatl perhaps had value. At least, they knew what to expect, accepted the rites and suffering as a means to an end.” She replied.

I raised my eyebrows at this. “You know, I've never heard a god admit they were wrong.” I observed.

“I was a memory, a bogeyman story to frighten children with for a thousand years before I got a second chance to be believed in again. Gives you a sense of perspective.”

“So, he's a wizard then?”

“ _Wizard_ .” She screwed her mouth up when she spoke, as if she disliked the taste of it. She shook her head “Yes, he's a… _wizard,_ or rather, given some guidance, some help making sense of it, he'd be one.”

I had an inkling of where this was going, and was about to open my mouth to speak, but she went on.

“Corazon Sanchez has no apprentice, no heir. When Huitzilopochtli's claim expires, she could make one, and bind him to the family, but there is the possibility of a counter claim.” And she turned the full force of her glittering stare to me.

  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

  
  


Simon awoke.

 

He lay partly submerged, in a half-weightless state. His legs floated, but his shoulders pressed into soft, but distinctly solid ground. He blinked, and waited for the black to clear, but his vision remained staunchly dark.

 

Confused, vague and disturbing memories howling at the edge of his mind. He sat up, and felt liquid flow around him, the splashing waves made from his movement echoing out into the black distance. He licked his wet hand and tasted fresh water, the first he’d known in days. He dropped his head to the unseen surface and drank like an animal until he gasped for air. 

 

For the first time in weeks, he could think: the sucking quagmire of fugue had vanished. His thoughts formed clear and sharp in his mind. The last thing he remembered, when the violently switching flashbacks faded and he found himself being pulled through the dirt, the stench of sweat and cheap aftershave from his captors as they hauled him towards the open coffin. He’d seen the rotting corpse of Vernon before him, the sweet, fetid stench of death permeating the fog of the drugs, and he'd tried to scream, but couldn't. A sudden shove and he fell, landing on rancid flesh squirming with maggots. He’d retched by reflex, and the pain of his bruised muscles spasming had made his vision blur and darken before the lid came down and then, it went black. 

 

He closed his eyes again, and pushed the horror away, breathing hard to keep the memory from rising up again. He heard the distant echo of Robas’ laughter and then it passed.

 

Flashbacks and…  _ dreams _ ?  _ Visions _ ? He rubbed his temples. The images were already blurry, fading out of memory, merging together in a hopeless storm that made no sense to his exhausted brain. He pressed his fist into his forehead, his head throbbing.

 

As his eyes adjusted, he realised that he was underground, at the shores of a vast lake lit by dim, verdant phosphorescence that mimicked the sickly green of night-vision enhancement. The water stretched out into inky black distance with no far shore visible.

 

He stood up, his feet pressing into the wet sand beneath the water. The pain was gone, but his body felt stiff and unnatural. He could see more light now, beyond the rise of the beach there was a faint, silvery glow, illuminating the sand. He felt something hard under his foot, too regular to a be a rock and saw that he’d trodden on carriage clock. He squinted in the darkness. A few feet away he saw a thick band of gold poking through the sand and beyond that a dark shape that when he came closer, resolved into a large animal pelt, gone hard and leathery in the dry air.

 

For a few minutes, he considered whether he was hallucinating again, but marvelling at the rough, powdery grains of sand as he rubbed his fingers together, the cool air of the cavern on his naked skin he knew that this was no dream. From further up the beach he could see a grey, anaemic light filling the air, pulsing softly, illuminating the sands, the strewn objects around him. 

 

He started walking.

 

****


	5. Chapter 5

_ Shit. _

 

I looked at Simon, still slumped in a loose, cross-legged position on the floor, staring vacantly into the air, his mind wandering elsewhere. I reached out and tentatively placed my hand on his forehead, feeling the auric surge like static beneath my fingers as our skin connected and then I shifted state, the gloomy stairwell dissolving into a sudden burst of light.

 

There wasn't much structure to this memory. Time had eroded details in the periphery, the edges of it blurring out of focus in a way that hurt my eyes if I stared too long, but the purity of the feeling remained as bright as a freshly struck bell: joy. I felt warm sun on my skin and inhaled the fresh scent of new mown grass. Only the centre of the vision remained in focus:  _ Marie _ , but not as I remembered her, a Marie that shone golden in hazy summer light, moving with fluid confidence, unburdened by anything. Marie smiling with the light in her eyes that I remembered from our ancient history. 

 

The light shifted, golden toned, but darker and there were faces I didn't recognise: men, all of them, but young men exuding a brassy élan. Bright light sparkled on old horse brasses and pint glasses. I tasted cider on my tongue. I felt the sense of being part of something greater, of kinship and hope before it blurred again and evolved into soothing post-coital satisfaction as warm bodies rubbed against mine, held me close enough to hear their beating hearts and I pushed out, that was too much information, and returned to the grim countenance of Santa Muerte's skeletal grin with a juddering psychic thump, shivering in the sudden cold and feeling slightly dirty at invading Simon’s mental privacy. 

 

“You can stop lurking, Corazon, I know you're there.” I said.

 

She stepped out of the shadow of the doorway beyond the flowers, where I’d felt her aura intruding for the past ten minutes. Corazon Sanchez, principle matriarch of her line, the most powerful  _ bruja _ in living memory to have walked Tepito's streets. She could seduce anyone, man or woman and anything in between with a sway of her hips, curse you through the next three generations by spitting in your shadow, but so could I. It wasn't really that impressive when you knew how.

 

“You might as well not bother.” I said. “I don't fall for that sort of thing.”

 

The woman who sat down in the other chair was unnaturally beautiful, every sweep and curve of her fabulous body flattered by the scarlet dress that clung and then fell away at exactly the right moment to accentuate the flesh beneath. For a second she had looked at me, her dark, wide eyes framed with lashes like spider's legs, skin like honey and lips lusciously inviting before the glamour dropped. 

 

Immune though I was, I could still feel the weight of the spell, the force of power behind it, pressing on my defences. To the unprotected, it would have been deadly.

 

The real Corazon Sanchez, twice widowed and now counting great-grandchildren, regarded me with her formidable stare.

 

“Some us like to make an  _ effort _ , now and then.” She said, primly, as she regarded the drying blood splatter on my shirt, the blue smears of cue-chalk on my crumpled trousers and raised an eyebrow at the Burberry check of my coat's lining. I decided not to mention that I hadn't actually paid for it.

 

Corazon had been rehearsing for the role of formidable matriarch since entering her apprenticeship as a girl. She had thinned in her face, but her near-black eyes had lost none of their soul-piercing fierceness. Her silver hair, pulled tight into a bun, stretched the skin of her temples almost taunt. She was thin, but not the frightening cachexic gauntness of her patron, just the bog-standard frailty that comes to all octogenarians, even witches. 

 

I shrugged. “What do you want?” I sighed.

 

“The boy.” She replied, her voice hungry in a way that made me uncomfortable.

 

“Why?”

 

“Well you clearly don't!” She laughed. I didn’t like her tone. Something about her gave me the creeps in a way that our previous conversations hadn’t, but I supposed this time, the circumstances of the meeting were personal, rather than professional. Perhaps I just viewed things with a different lens now.

 

“Says who?” I snapped. I didn't like her judging stare as it moved between Simon and I.

 

She laughed, her expression incredulous “You last saw him when he was what, seven? You knew who he was, and you just ignored it. Left him there. Great plan!” 

 

Okay, I was prepared to admit that if I'd taken Simon from his Mum, claimed him as mine, he probably wouldn't have ended up battered, bleeding and… all the rest on the floor of a basement in a shit end of Mexico, but I couldn't guarantee that what would have happened otherwise would have been better. I thought of my sister Cheryl, suffering in Hell, of Gemma, who had been prepared to kill me in defence of her own survival, hating me for all the shit I’d put her and her family through. I could feel the ghosts in the background, always, standing right behind me with their judging stares.

 

_ Shit _ .

 

I chewed my lip as I thought, because beyond the pressing guilt, something here felt really  _ off _ , but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

 

“So? What's it to you?” I said, defensive. “Who're you to go about judging me for my decisions.”

 

Corazon sneered and changed the subject “My daughters have abandoned the craft for technology. My grandchildren think I'm a just crazy old lady, and I'm sick of so-called   _ modern  _ witches coming here for their stupid blurry photographs.” She spoke with such venom that the air between us rippled with a spurt of flaring magic. “I want a  _ proper _ apprentice before I go. Someone who can carry on our traditions with respect.” She gesticulated for emphasis, and in that moment I felt it: the subtle enchantment lacing her words, the neuro-hypnotic pulse of a commanding magic in her voice, designed to slip under my defences. I bristled but held my response in check. I wanted to know what she was really up to. 

 

I carried on, as if I hadn’t noticed.“So… what does Simon want?”

 

She jerked back. “What?”

 

I took a long drag on my cigarette and slouched back on my chair. “You don't  _ need  _ me to rescind my er…  claim to him, he just has to chose to join you of his own free will. So either, you consider him incapacitated, which hardly strikes me as favourable conditions for an apprentice to start, or you don’t think he'd choose to join.

 

Something clicked into place then “Simon  _ knows _ magic already. You said he wanted to learn magic.” I pointed to Santa Meurte, who looked indifferent to the whole conversation “That he was the first petition to _ you _ for a thousand years.”

 

Corazon looked unmoved by this accusation “He can't make sense of it! He needs guidance.”

 

“ _ No _ .” I said. I had seen Simon open the wards to the back stair. Simon, I realised had the power,  _ our _ power, to be as good a practitioner as I was, but he was just too out of it to actually make it work. Simon had been tortured in Mexico, I had seen some of it, and I though going crazy after that experience was a pretty legitimate course of action. I shuddered at the thought of what I'd seen in that room. He was a powerful mage in his own right, but just unable to keep it together on a daily basis to look after himself, to defend himself against…  _ what? _

 

“ _ No _ .” I repeated, and this time, I put some force into it, enough that Corazon flinched. I had hoped that Simon would go the rest of his life without realising his potential if I just ignored it, and that would keep him safe from the same fate that had befallen ever other poor fucker who’d the misfortune to be loved by me, but that hadn’t worked, and now, I felt like I owed him. In my head, I started to form the shapes I needed as I spoke, understanding now that whatever Corazon wanted, she was going to fight me for it.

 

“You don't want him as an apprentice, you want him for something else.” I said “You need me to rescind my claim to him to allow you to do it” I was vague as to why, but I wasn't go to let her know that I didn’t truly understand her reasons “Because you want to do something you know I won't approve of you-”

 

I sensed it then, the short, sudden stillness in the air as the power Corazon extruded to shield herself contracted and in the same instant, she struck.

  
  
  


****


End file.
